Freedom Memorial
The Freedom Memorial at Checkpoint Charlie near the Wall Museum was a memorial for the victims of the GDR border regime, which was erected on October 31, 2004 by the Arbeitsgemeinschaft 13. August eV and cleared on July 5, 2005. It consisted of a white painted wall made of 120 original wall segments near the original course of the Berlin Wall , in front of which 1067 crosses stood in memory of the victims of the GDR border regime ( fatalities on the Berlin Wall and those on the inner-German border ).
history
The August 13th working group leased a fallow land at Checkpoint Charlie in October 2004 . Its director Alexandra Hildebrandt announced that she would set up a “temporary art installation” on the open space until the lease expires at the end of the year. She wanted in the possession of, also run by the association Wall Museum by artists from segments of the Berlin Wall located North and South Korea as well as Israel and Palestine to be painted. On the one hand, this should be a “memorial for peace and the victims of the Berlin Wall” and, on the other hand, a “protest against the trival of the place by the city of Berlin”. The working group and the museum had already criticized the tourist use of the site in the past and tried to limit this, which the Wall Museum - according to Sybille Frank's conclusion in a work on the "formation of a heritage industry at Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie" - perceived as competition.
The approval as an art campaign by the Mitte district office and the lease agreement with Bankaktiengesellschaft Hamm as site manager expired at the end of 2004. The operator refused to remove the installation again; Bankaktiengesellschaft Hamm filed an eviction suit, which was granted on April 8, 2005.
On July 5, 2005, the controversial eviction was carried out. Despite violent protests from SED victims, the bailiff had the memorial cross and the wall segments removed. Some demonstrators had chained themselves to crosses; this delayed the eviction somewhat.
See also
literature
- Sybille Frank: Commemorating the Wall as a race: The formation of a heritage industry at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin . Campus Verlag 2009
Web links
- Second death. In: Der Spiegel 27/2005, July 4, 2005
Individual evidence
- ↑ In the English original: "Monument to peace and the vicitims of the Berlin Wall"; quoted from Frank 2009: p. 200
- ↑ In the English original: "But, also, a protest against the city of Berlin for tribalization of the place", also quoted from Sybille Frank (2009): Commemorating the Wall as a Competition : The formation of a heritage industry at Berlin Checkpoint Charlie . P. 200
- ↑ Cf. Sybille Frank (2009): Commemorating the Wall as a Competition: The Formation of a Heritage Industry at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. Pp. 176-199.
Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 28 ″ N , 13 ° 23 ′ 26 ″ E